With Mothers Day upon us, it is time to reflect on our mother, both earthly and those that are no longer with us. The other day I posted a blog about having parents, or better yet, the blog was tong in cheek about needing to prove I had parents on my …

The scandal of the Church has been on the front pages of the papers and lead stories on the nightly news. Over all this is a good thing, the Church needs to deal with this scandal. But what confuses me is the pure joy they, meaning the media, seem to get from all this. The catholic priest who molested young boys need help and prayers for sure, the bishops who allowed this to carry on and moved them from parish to parish need to be reprimanded, they need to step down. But why al the joy in the media?

It is good that the media is investigating the scandal, or should I say it would be good if they were investigating the scandal fairly. But that is not the case, they are on a witch hunt and they are willing to take down the innocent as well as the guilty, and at the same time look the other way when it comes to our school systems or other faiths. This to me is a misuse of power and an injustice to children.

The current scandal in the Church is a scandal from twenty or thirty or more years ago, by no means lessening the travesty of it all, the over all population of priest involved is 2% at most. Once again not taking anything away from the harm caused, 2% is way to much, .0001% is to much, but over all 2% of our priest is not a large number.

Such figures led her to contend "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests." (Source)

Family members — fathers, stepfathers, uncles, older siblings — commit 47% of all reported sexual assaults against children in their own homes.

49% of all sexual assaults against children are committed by persons known either by the child or the child’s family — teachers, coaches, physicians, ministers, priests, neighbors, youth leaders. (Source)

I am not using the statistics to take the spot light off of the Catholic Church, but rather to point it also on public education and other areas of concern.

Over all the reporting on the scandal in the Church has been a scandal unto itself. And with the current wave of anti-Catholic feelings I expect it will continue for sometime to come. But we as Catholics can do something about we can fight back, promote the positive aspects of the Church, the good She does for youth and the community She resides in. We can also point out, in letters to the editors, the injustice of the persecution of the Church over our public schools.

In a way the abuse at the public schools is an even greater evil than the priest. We have no choice but to send our youth to school, and we allow teachers to have full access to our youth 8 hour per day, five days a week. And if they are involved in sports, we also allow them to change in front of grown adults. We, in some ways are asking for it,

The scandal involving the priest is sickening at best, but we hold some of that responsibility ourselves. We places the parish priest upon pedestals and made them gods in there own rights, we allowed our children to spend the night at the rectory or to go on trips with them. Sure some parents were good friends with the priest, and as the statistics above state 49% of abuse is by someone they know and trust. But do we have to allow the percentage to go up? Do we have to feed in to it?

The problem of abuse is a social problem and it is not a new problem, it is as old as time (article). The Greek society is full of stories of young boys and me, by no means justifying the actions, just pointing out the reality. The issue is social. Contrary to popular belief most people who sexually abuse youth are not gay. As stated above they are mostly family members or close family friends.

[M]ost men who molest little boys are not gay. Only 21 percent of the child molesters we studied who assault little boys were exclusively homosexual. Nearly 80 percent of the men who molested little boys were heterosexual or bisexual, and most of these men were married and had children of their own.27

These scientists have concluded that pedophilia is a separate orientation from homosexuality and that the vast majority of molesters who target boys have either no interest in mature males or are heterosexual men who are attracted to the feminine characteristics of young boys.(source)

Homosexuality and homosexual pedophilia are not synonymous. In fact, it may be that these two orientations are mutually exclusive, the reason being that the homosexual male is sexually attracted to masculine qualities whereas the heterosexual male is sexually attracted to feminine characteristics, and the sexually immature child’s qualities are more feminine than masculine. . . . The child offender who is attracted to and engaged in adult sexual relationships is heterosexual. It appears, therefore, that the adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater sexual risk to underage children than does the adult homosexual male.19 .(source)

My over all point to this blog, we need to look at facts and we need to understand what we are dealing with. Sexual abuse of children is not a “Catholic” thing, nor is it a “gay” thing, it is a society thing and one that needs to be understood. The media is not doing its job, rather it is conduction a man hunt, if you will, on Catholics.

As Catholics we need to educate ourselves so we can better defend the Church in these times of turmoil. We need to know facts so we are not just shooting from the hip but rather using facts to fight our cause. God willing the Church will survive and come out stringer when this persecution is over.

This is take from an online article in Time magazine…..

By EBEN HARRELL Eben Harrell – 29 mins ago

A professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Robert Feldman has spent most of his career studying the role deception plays in human relationships. His most recent book, The Liar in Your Life: How Lies Work and What They Tell Us About Ourselves, lays out in stark terms just how prevalent lying has become. He talked to TIME about why we all need a dose of honesty.

What are the main findings of your research?Not only do we lie frequently, but we lie without even thinking about it. People lie while they are getting acquainted at an average of three times in a 10-minute period. Participants in my studies actually are not aware that they are lying that much until they watch videos of their interactions.

One of the reasons people get away with so much lying, your research suggests, is that we are all essentially dupes. Why do we believe so many lies?This is what I call the liar’s advantage. We are not very good at detecting deception in other people. When we are trying to detect honesty, we look at the wrong kinds of nonverbal behaviors and we misinterpret them. The problem is that there is no direct correlation between someone’s nonverbal behavior and their honesty. "Shiftiness" could also be the result of being nervous, angry, distracted or sad. Even trained interrogators [aren’t] able to detect deception at [high] rates. You might as well flip a coin to determine if someone is being honest.

What’s more, a lot of the time we don’t want to detect lies in other people. We are unwilling to put forward the cognitive effort to suspect the veracity of statements, and we aren’t motivated to question people when they tell us things we want to hear. When we ask someone, "How are you doing?" and they say "fine," we really don’t want to know what their aches and pains are. So we take "fine" at face value. (Read a TIME story on ground rules for telling lies)

Do you feel deception is a particularly relevant topic to our society?We are living in a time and culture in which it’s easier to lie than it has been in the past. The message that pervades society is that it’s okay to lie; you can get away with it. One of the things I found in my research is that when you confront people with their lies they very rarely display remorse. Lying is not seen as being morally reprehensible in any strong way.

You can make the assumption that because it often makes social interactions go more smoothly, lying is okay. But there is a cost to even seemingly benign lies. If people are always telling you that you look terrific and you did a great job on that presentation, there’s no way to have an accurate understanding of yourself. Lies put a smudge on an interaction, and if it’s easy to lie to people in minor ways it becomes easier to lie in bigger ways.

You say in the book that recent DNA evidence suggests that 10% of people have fathers other than the men they believe conceived them. So is lying pretty widespread in our intimate lives, too?Research shows we lie less to people that we are close to. But when we do, they tend to be the bigger types of lies. And the fallout is greater if the deception is discovered.

You show how lying is a social skill. Does that mean it’s part of an evolutionary legacy?I don’t think lying is genetically programmed. We learn to lie. We teach our kids to be effective liars by modeling deceitful behavior.

In your book you offer a way to cut back on lies. What’s the "AHA! Remedy?"AHA! stands for active honesty assessment. We need to be aware of the possibility that people are lying to us, and we need to demand honesty in other people. Otherwise we will get a canned affirmation. At the same time, we have to demand honesty of ourselves. We have to be the kind of people who don’t tell white lies. We don’t have to be cruel and totally blunt, but we have to convey information honestly. The paradox here is that if you are 100% honest and blunt, you will not be a popular person. Honesty is the best policy. But it’s not a perfect policy.

I remember learning in one of my psychology classes that one of the dangers of helping a married couple reconcile is that once they do, they may no longer wish to stay together. That sometimes when we “grow” and “change” we end up growing and changing right out of the relationship. It’s the risk of the change.

I would think that the same can be said for all relationships, that when one or both change there is always a risk of growing truly apart. If one grows and the other does not, it is often times hard to deal with, the person who has moved on finds it hard to understand why you have not and the ones who have stayed are overwhelmed with your changes and feel left behind. So the fact that we change does not mean our life will be an easy road, fact is that often times changes make our life more complex not less.

So why bother?

In truth the answer is truly up to you, bother or not, change is always apart of our life, so if you choose not to, others will choose to. Growth is what we are created for, it is how we are hard wired, we will change and grow or we will be left behind.

The other day I wrote a blog concerning a TV program I watched about the Knight Templar’s. The basic idea of what I was writing was the fact that the TV show spent 10 to 20 minutes talking about how mean and evil the Knights were, yet gave just a fleeting mention to the fact that they were protecting and defending the Holy Land from attach from the Muslims.

I found the responses I received interesting, I posted this blog on my STATIC Youth blog site, but also on my Linked In site in the Catholic Group I belong to. The STATIC Youth site received no comments, but the Catholic Group on Linked in, wow! I was called a Liberal Catholic, told to go to confession and basically my faith call in to question because I dared to say that the Knights may have done some bad things.

I responded to this person for a little bit, but I have decided it matters not what I say to him, he is just dead set on saving my soul, regardless as to what I have to say. It’s almost like tossing a life ring to someone on dry land. Now please understand, I am not saying I don’t need salvation, because I do, but what I am getting at is I have explained to this person, several times, that I am not what he thinks I am, nor and I attaching the Catholic Church. But that is just adding facts to it, and he will have none of that!

It did make me stop and thing a bit, here I am, online, have a major discussion with someone I don’t even know, being accused of anti-Catholic views, and basically being told I am not a Catholic at all. How is it, that a person feels they can make such statements concerning someone they never met nor has he read anything else I have written, and based on his responses to what I have said to him, he will not read other things I have written. Have we gotten to a point were people feel free to attach you, to call in to question your convictions over the net. Have we allowed ourselves to be fooled in to thinking that we have gained knowledge of a persons soul or being over the net?

In some ways, yes we have, look at all the so call “long distance” relationships started via chat rooms, or people who claim friendships to IM friends they never had met. We have allowed the simple task of typing to each other replace face to face, we have allowed the net with all its cool and amazing possibilities to overshadow human contact. So in a way, I have lead myself in to this little mess, but contributing to it. Such is life…

Now, I will continue to post, and I will continue to dialog with others on the net, and yes i will continue to add people to my “friends” list, I just found it interesting, that’s all.

With spring on it’s way, and it is time to think about spring cleaning, not only your house, but also your soul. We all to often collect spiritual junk through the year, bad memories, bad relationships and habits that leave us a little cluttered. The clutter of life can and does get in the way of life itself, so take out your spiritual window cleaner and wipe your view of the world clean of all the clutter.

Take time to make a list of all that is in your life, the good the bad and the ugly, bit don’t forget to add the beautiful to the list. Start by removing the ugly from your life. It can be people, art, music or any other ugly in your life. You may not know this, but ugly art, music and such do effect your life, they bring you down. So remove all that holds you down, and replace it with the beautiful of live. Get music that is uplifting, read a book of hope and love and find friends who will lift you up, not hold you down,

I would recommend a day of contemplation is added to your schedule. Just one day of thinking deeply about your clutter and what needs to go… Then let it GO! As the old saying goes, Let go and let God! There is truth in that statement…

Below is an article I found on the web, I thought it may help you with your spring cleaning of the soul…

Try some of these “Life Cleaning” tips:

Start with one drawer … Then a closet. Next, a whole room. Rampage through your physical space, one step at a time, as a symbolic gesture of cleaning up your life and making room for love. Take a big black garbage bag — or 10! –and dump things. Give anything you don’t need any more to the Garbage Goddess or to charity. Or sell some stuff on e-bay (but if you are never going to get around to that, give it way!).

Let go of memorabilia from past or failed relationships. This includes anything that ties you inappropriately to the past, or to a love affair that is long over. Naturally you want to save anything that is valuable or sacred, but pack it up and place it in storage — at least for now. You should not be looking at pictures of your old loves on the mantle, or stuff that reminds you of that person, while trying to get ready for the new. Keeping a photo of your ex on display energetically keeps him or her around your house!

Make cleaning up your life a fun and rejuvenating ritual. Play music, such as “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta Hair,” and dance around as your ditch the old the make room for the new. Music and dance is like a moving prayer that helps generate good feelings and hope.

Write an elimination list. Jot down thoughts, items, relationships, “things” you know are in the way of your soul mate success. List things you choose to release or transform for the highest good. When ready to let things go, or at least reach the next level of willingness to let go, rip up your list and flush the pieces, symbolically releasing the things that have kept life messy, out of balance and at a standstill. Say a prayer for the highest good of all involved.